The Misused Word: Aggression

Think film theory, for a moment.

Imagine that the camera gives you a point of view of a man swinging his axe toward a target just barely out of view; all you can see is the violent strength put into each swing, an intense, determined look in the man’s eyes.

That’s aggression. By some definitions, it’s also violence.

The question, though, is what’s on the other end of the swing? From the point of view that you’re given that merely depicts aggression, how can you tell? Let’s swivel the camera slightly and see that it’s a tree that the man is trying to cut down. Let’s say we expand our knowledge to realize that he’s doing so in order to build a home.

Or perhaps, when we swivel the camera, we see that he’s attacking someone with it.

The exact same aggression might be used for an essential constructive activity, or to do someone harm. Aggression is likely high in the running for the worst-understood word in our language, as some give it altogether negative definitions. To some, like young children, aggression is frightening in any case, and there’s no doubt about it: whether he has a constructive or destructive intent, you had best not get in between him and his target. It is indeed dangerous.

Due to the destructive potential of aggression, some despise aggression altogether. The “Daddy’s girl” archetype can’t handle the idea, unable to develop the maturity to understand and discern the fact that by nature a man MUST be trusted with his own ability to be aggressive, and indeed encouraged in every way to develop it. Enter feminism, which demonizes aggression altogether, save for just one condition: it’s under a woman’s control. How dare he have that terrifying strength? With just a slight instinct of common sense, that becomes: how dare he possess that strength that is not under my control?

Feminists, and many, many women who don’t call themselves so, respond by attempting to turn the man against himself: your aggression is evil. It makes you rape and murder and destroy. In so doing, they are the victimizers, as guilty of destruction as anyone, to both the man himself and to the constructive effects of masculine aggression that build the world.

I’ve heard this gripe from many, many men: why are the girls dating all the “bad guys” and leaving all the perfectly good, nice guys? Here is what happened, and it happens in “the church” as much as anywhere, and it’s the sick, sick trick that so many men and women have played against men. Is it not sick enough that they resent a man’s strength belonging to him and being his with which to decide how best to control? But here’s how they got you to do it, and maybe the most wretched trick ever played against man; here’s how they trained men to emasculate themselves: they appealed to your desire to be a good man. In your desire to do so, you responded out of a desire NOT to harm others or even scare them. If I only stand to unsettle others with masculinity, then perhaps it’s best to throw it away.

In my opinion, this matter also separates the girls from the women: an ability to remain in a soft, supportive and unthreatening form while being unphased by the terrifying sight of masculinity in the form of aggression. Otherwise she is destructive in the vein of Delilah–more on this later.

Are those “bad guys” really bad? The men who look at what is obviously the feminization of “the church” and have no intention of doing to themselves what so many (if not most) Christian men have done? Sometimes! Because some men neither respond to the desires of a local culture OR God. They won’t listen when they’re implicitly asked to emasculate themselves, nor will they submit to God who has made men to be fully masculine while in total submission to Him. Of course, this exacerbates the confusion. Women are very, very right to find aggression and masculinity attractive, but the end result of these men may indeed follow with their own learned contempt for masculinity–not to make excuses for such women, however. Sadly, “the church” magnetizes this phenomenon worse than anywhere, oftentimes being havens for man-hating women whose contempt for masculinity is acceptable within it. Tragically, these women open themselves to further deception–some of the worst sorts of deceptions conceivable.

But the Godly man recognizes God as the uppermost management. He will say, I must follow God rather than man. (Acts 4:19) He knows that being party to his own emasculation is a sin against God who made him fearfully and wonderfully with a purpose to fulfill, indeed as a reflection of Himself, and hence this action is ultimately in the best interests of others as well. A Godly man can always stand with all his strength against human discomfort. It is worth it: he lives with a purpose, used by no one, but serving all, like Christ before him.

Think of Sampson, which deserves much, MUCH meditation this day in age. How many aggressive men came his way and he met with aggression, recognizing the sheer danger they posed against him? He held nothing back and slew them by the multitudes. And YET, he somehow had no idea what to do when a woman, Delilah, showed every single sign that she was, likewise, trying to destroy him; she didn’t rush and attack him aggressively, but destroyed him in his sleep by cutting his hair, even after giving Sampson evidence that removing his strength was exactly what she intended to do. The removal of his ability to be aggressive resulted in his destruction–in no way what God intended.

Are many men, like Sampson, unable to identify destructive intent toward them unless it approaches in the form of direct aggression? To some who don’t see the attack of feminism for what it really is, that seems to be the case.

It is crucial for all to understand this–absolutely crucial. Like with Sampson, it is life and death to understand that aggression is not the enemy, but invisible evil intent. Aggression itself is essential for life.